Individual research performance: a proposal for comparing apples to oranges

Abstract

The evaluation of performance at the individual level is of fundamental importance in informing management decisions. The literature provides various indicators and types of measures, however a problem that is still unresolved and little addressed is how to compare the performance of researchers working in different fields (apples to oranges). In this work we propose a solution, testing various scaling factors for the distributions of research productivity in 174 scientific fields. The analysis is based on the observation of scientific production by all Italian university researchers active in the hard sciences over the period 2004-2008, as indexed by the Web of Science. The most effective scaling factor is the average of the productivity distribution of researchers with productivity above zero.

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• A categorization of arguments for counting methods for publication and citation indicators
• A critical cluster analysis of 44 indicators of author-level performance
• A nation's foreign and domestic professors: which have better research performance? (The Italian case)
• The determinants of academic career advancement: evidence from Italy
• A novel methodology to assess the scientific standing of nations at field level
• Comparison of research productivity of Italian and Norwegian professors and universities
• A methodology to compute the territorial productivity of scientists: The case of Italy
• Accounting for gender research performance differences in ranking universities
• A critical review of the proposed reforms of the academic performance indicators applied in the assessment of researchers' performance in Hungary